TFS HealthScience

TFS was founded in 1996 in Lund, Sweden, as Trial Form Support. The name described exactly what it did at the time: manage documentation for clinical trials. Thirty years later, that description no longer comes close to explaining the company TFS is today.

More than 500 professionals, a presence in 40 countries, and over 1,800 studies show how far TFS has come. But while the business expanded into new markets, capabilities, and greater scientific depth, the brand was still speaking from an earlier version of the company. TFS had outgrown its own brand. The arrival of Ratos, new leadership under Markus Granlund, and the company’s 30th anniversary created the right moment to close that gap.

The challenge was not to make TFS look bigger. It was to project the scientific and operational authority already within the company more clearly, in a sector where many CROs still relied on outdated corporate codes and increasingly interchangeable claims.

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What the brand was not yet saying

To understand how to move forward, we first had to identify what was holding that perception back.

The immersion gave a name to the first tension: the invisible giant. Inside, we found an organization with a strong culture, flexibility, clinical expertise, and deep commitment to its projects. Outside, those strengths were not generating the same level of perception. Even internally, it was difficult for TFS to see itself from a position of leadership.

We also found a company explaining itself differently depending on the solution. Clinical Development emphasized clinical judgment and the molecule; Strategic Resourcing focused on flexibility, deployment, and efficiency. Both were true, but a common layer was missing—one that could show they were part of the same way of operating.

A third barrier emerged, this time cultural. TFS’s Nordic roots had shaped a way of working built on rigor, transparency, and a strong reluctance to promise anything that could not be proven. That restraint was a strength. In communication, however, it could also become a limitation when facing much more expansive competitors.

But alongside those tensions, we also found the strengths to build from: stable teams, a strong European presence with global reach, experience across five therapeutic areas, and an offering capable of supporting different needs throughout a clinical trial. Underpinning it all was a very direct commitment to the molecule and to the sponsor. TFS already had the proof. The strategy had to turn it into a position.

From explaining capabilities to taking a position

The strategy turned those strengths into a clearer position for TFS: moving from explaining its capabilities to asserting the value they created with greater confidence. The focus shifted away from size and toward positioning TFS as a reference partner: a partner chosen for its judgment, continuity, and ability to protect the progress of a trial.

To make that position tangible, we defined concepts that organized real strengths within the business. Clinical continuum expressed TFS’s ability to support different sponsor needs throughout clinical development; therapeutic depth captured its concentrated experience across five therapeutic areas; and teams that stay highlighted the value of having teams that remain close to the study over time.

That proposition was reinforced by co-ownership, a way of taking shared responsibility for the sponsor’s molecule and timelines, and Nordic ethics, which turned TFS’s roots into a distinct way of working: rigor, transparency, and data without spin. Together, these ideas supported an impact-led proposition: Global success driven by trial security and Nordic ethics.

And to bring that position into everyday use, we developed a proprietary glossary that helped replace the category’s generic language with terms that were more precise, recognizable, and true to the way TFS works.

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A strategy for the next stage

The result was a platform designed to act as an operational compass for TFS: a shared framework to align the executive team and different business areas, set priorities, and make decisions from a consistent brand position.

It also introduced a new mindset: a more assertive way of understanding TFS’s own value, speaking from evidence, and moving beyond justifying capabilities to clearly defending what the company brings to the table.

From there, the strategy set up the next moves: translating that position into a distinctive visual and verbal identity, and building a new digital space capable of making it visible to the market.

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Making visible an authority that was already there

TFS did not need to build a new kind of authority. It had spent thirty years earning it through scientific rigor, continuity, and commitment to every study. The strategy turned that quiet excellence into a position the company could express more clearly in the global market.

A new way to take its place, built from the roots that have always been there.

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